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I feel distressed about the direction our immediate environment seems to have taken. But it was also the year when I experienced the willingness of so many around me to want to do something good for others.

Because of the support of friends in our network we have reached out to those in need both near and far– several hundred miles away.

At the beginning of the year I started collecting donations in Sweden under the name ”Together we make a difference” to help people on the run in Greece. By the end of the year, I can tell you my dear friends so generously donated an incredible quarter of a million Swedish Crowns (242, 000 SEK) !!

”Together we make the difference” sounds like a cliché – but I think it’s fantastic, because we have really proved it to be true!

We have helped people in the Greek island of Lesbos, where soaked, terrified and traumatised fellow human beings set foot in Europe for the first time.

We have helped out in the port of Athens where so many desperate people were stuck when Europe’s borders were closed. We have helped in the large refugee camp of Idomeni that was formed at the border with Macedonia, where around 18,000 people gathered.

We have helped build a couple of new camps around Greece, two of 40 camps built to be more suitable to house people for a very long time to come, until the EU countries have agreed on what to do with each other.

We have also helped people arriving here in Sweden with support, accommodation and things, trying to welcome our newly arrived citizens, and guide them through the required process in an increasingly guarded Sweden.

Your fantastically generous financial support has included helping to supply basic warmth and dry clothes to newcomers. We have been able to buy shoes, sleeping bags, tents, cooking utensils, baby milk and diapers.

We have supported the purchase of educational materials for kids classes in the makeshift camps and schools and started an art project in one of the camps.

We have been able to allow residents of the six vulnerable families that we have hosted in apartments in the Greek village Goumenissa. I can tell you now that the UNHCR has taken over the financial responsibility for all our families, which is so gratifying.

We have shown all these people that there are many of us who do not want to see them as a number, but as individuals, like ourselves. And above all, we have all shown that we can make a difference!

Just as I believe that what is happening and continues to happen in the world (on many levels) will bring great suffering for a very long time, I also know that what we have done together has positively impacted many individuals’ lives for the better.

I really wish you all could take part of the gratitude and joy that I have been shown by the people whose lives we have affected together. That in itself has given me the energy to continue in the hurricane.

With this, I want to thank all of you, dear friends, for your fine, generous and warm support.

It is you who have made all this possible – and it is something to be proud of. I wish you all a happy and joyful 2017 and a hope for a better year for all of our fellow human beings on the run. Unfortunately, the situation for refugees in Greece is in no way over, and it still requires major relief operations. I do not myself right now how my involvement will look like next year. I’ll get back to you when I know more, and in any case, I will write about how it’s been for the Abdi family with their little baby Joanna, as so many of you have helped support this family and followed their progress during the year.

As many of you know, Jonny is currently running art workshops for refugee children in Northern Greece. We urgently need some help to continue this project. The conditions for children in the camps is very hard; there is little or no formal education, structure or stimulation for them.

We have volunteers of all kinds on the project; art teachers, actors, playwrights & artists from England, Wales, Greece, the States and Syria. We have refugee artists, parents & translators in the team and we hope that they will be able to expand this project. All volunteer team members pay their own way & give their own time for free, fund transport to & from the camps and purchase art supplies.

The team has been running daily English-Arabic/Kurdish workshops in both military-run refugee camps on the outskirts of Thessaloniki & in Goumenissa, a small town near the Macedonian border, for the Syrian children brought there by our sister housing project.

If you would like any more information or would like to get involved in the project, please get in touch with Jonny or Joanna on Facebook or Instagram (jonnybradford74) or email jonnybradford74@gmail.com.

As you all know, we are Jonny and Joanna, and we have been volunteering for Lighthouse Relief, a small non-profit social enterprise registered in Sweden. We are now part of a small group of volunteers called ‘Share the Magic.’ Currently we are moving a few families out of the camps, as well as running an art class for children in one of the camps, and doing whatever else we possibly can.

Every penny we collect goes to helping refugees. We fund our own travels to and from Greece.

If you are in Sweden and would like to make a donation, please Swish Joanna on: 0736-800 444.

If you are outside Sweden and would like to donate to Share the Magic, you can donate here at our fundraising page, or here are our UK Halifax bank account details:

Little Clara Hessos was born in the Softex camp, in terrible conditions here she is 3 months old.

Finally, after three long weeks of hard work, two more families have moved into apartments in the village in the northern Goumenissa, Greece, away from the miserable military controlled camps.

The Family Shamuo moving into their new home from the Kalachori camp . Kajeen was so happy to find a doll waiting for him.

Thanks to the amazing volunteers on the ground in Greece, Jonny, Dirk, Maria, Sally and several other wonderful people who make up our little volunteer group Share The Magic. Doctors without Borders have helped by donating furniture for the apartment.

Only a few days ago the Shamuo family, a Syrian Kurdish family, moved into one of the apartments. The family are Jwan and Gulistan, Grandma, and two beautiful daughters, Ajeen and Kajeen. The family have lived in several different camps with their small children for over a year, each camp worse than the other, with terribly tough conditions. They have not slept in real beds since they fled their home in Aleppo. They have been through indescribable hardship that no human being should ever have to experience, let alone children.

The day after spending their first night in their new home. An indescribable feeling to have a real bed again.

In the camps there are between 500 and 16,000 people. Mrs. Shamuo says: “I can’t believe I finally get to cook food myself without having to queue for food. To take a shower with hot water, in private, and not have to share dirty toilets with hundreds of other people.”

These basic things give us human beings our dignity- and it is hard for most of us to imagine now having them. Thank you to everyone who has supported this project to make it possible to move even a few families out of the camps. We wish that we could help everyone, but we are also very grateful and happy that we can help someone at all.

We will continue to support various projects inside the camps, such as the Children’s Art Project that Jonny has started in Kalachori camp.

Pappa Jwan and Mama Gulistan send their Thanks to everyone who has helped make this possible. ”The feeling of relief is indescribable”Daughters Ameen, 4 years old, and Kajeen, 2 years old.The family when they had just arrived, together with Jonny, Sally and Maria, part of our little volunteer group, Share the Magic.

The family Idres move away from Softex to a better camp. You might remember the Idres family from Homs with their three children and 3-month old baby Clara who lives in the Softex camp? Several of you wanted to help them in any way possible. Jonny and Maria went over to them with some clothes last week, which they were thrilled about. And now, thanks to Maria and Sally’s amazing network, they have managed to find a place for them in a much better camp run by the Swiss Red Cross. We have contact with a volunteer there who runs a small tent school for both children and adults, and also runs other activities in that camp to try and help make everyday life in the camp better, during a long and uncertain wait for the EU to decide their future.

Military controlled squalor. In the military controlled Softex camp, conditions are pretty bleak. The Idris family should be allowed to leave it behind in a couple of weeks. This camp has a really bad reputation. It is actually controlled by the state but it’s the military who runs the camp. The EU has give sanction for Greece to “take care” of all the refugees, while politicians squabble and disagree on which countries should receive them. The Greek military are not the ones limiting their freedom to apply for asylum and their human dignity. The squalor of these camps is a direct consequence of the fact that the EU has accepted closed borders, leaving people in limbo, in Greece, for an indefinite period of time. I still get deeply disappointed, however, by the quality of the sub-standard camps run by the Greek military given the financial support they have received from the EU.

Every person who is forced to flee their country to get away from war and persecution carries their own unique story. This is one of them. It’s a short excerpt from Ramia’s story that she wrote for us in her own words about her experiences in Aleppo, before she fled the town and country with her family. No child or person should ever have to experience this.

Ramia is the oldest daughter of one of the Syrian families that is in our little group ‘Share the magic.’ Our network is supporting this project with apartments in the village of Goumenissa in Northern Greece. Thank you to everyone who is helping to support a few children and families with us.

The point of no return

The story of our family is the story of many families from Aleppo, just one of the thousands of stories of war, in one way or another. We used to hear the sounds of bullets everywhere, a terrible power seemed to rupture and our nights turned to black with the songs of guns and shells. This was a terrible year in Aleppo. The city was systematically destroyed by the theft of property and the mass displacement of people from their homes. Many women were widowed and everyday more children slept on the street corners in the cold and the heat. There was still some hope that people might come back to their senses and that security might return. But the city was besieged. Many of its inhabitants fled to other areas that were safer, such as Latakia, Tartus, and Damascus. After a year of suffering and a lack of resources we decided it was time for us to go.

I went back to my University to complete my second year when a rocket hit the building. I will never forget that day. That day I saw body parts flying past the students in front of me and my friend threw herself over me to protect me. There was blood everywhere and only screaming prevailed amidst burning smoke and broken glass.

I saw so many young men and women crying, and I joined them with my own tears of pain and suffering. I fled from the building and began to run in fear of everything until someone finally stopped me. They asked me for my father’s phone number, so that he could come to take me home, and when he arrived I had no consciousness of where I was. I stayed in the house for a month afterwards, too scared to leave, but my mother always said ‘nothing shall ever happen to us except what God has written for us.’

Do not forget, we are used to shells. Things became slowly worse from there. One day when we were all out of the house a gas jar (Hell Shells) fell on the house next door to our own. Thank God my mother was with my Aunt along with my little sister and brother, and my father was working with my older brothers, and I was in the market. But our neighbours – five children under three, a number of parents, and an elderly man and women were buried under the rubble.

Nothing remained of our building either, whose stones had crushed a garden house where a women and a little girl lived. I could see children in shreds and feel the pain of not being able do anything to help. We left. This had become a normality for people in Aleppo, an everyday life scene.

Arriving in Greece…When the volunteers greeted us on the beach they felt like angels. They took our friend who was bleeding straight to the hospital, and helped the women and children on to land first, and tried to soothe our fears. I will say that in this moment I was happy. It is a nice feeling to have survived, but it is also painful as we have moved away from our country and our lives and reached a point of no return.

As many of you know, we have started a small network called ”Share the Magic.” This is to focus our efforts finding housing for a few families. Now all 10 kids from our current families will now start in a Greek school and daycare. This is fantastic news and with thanks to Maria who has pulled strings in her fantastic network in order to be able to get them places in school. The kids have (today) received the vaccination they need for them to be accepted in school. Each syringe costs 100 euros, and we have a total of 14 children to vaccinate, together with the new family’s children who are soon moving in. Sally, a wonderful American volunteer, got the full amount donated by one of her friends back home in California. Amazing!

Last Saturday we celebrated with the entire ‘Share the Magic’ gang, with a picnic and birthday party for Maria and Dirks 2-Year-old son Arrionas. What a beautiful day we had all together, with so much joy and laughter. It really did feel like magic to see these happy kids running around. There are many of us who have played a small part in giving them a chance to get a reasonably normal life during their escape from the war in Syria. It is impossible to mention everyone- you know who you are. Thank you again all of you who have made this possible, through volunteering in person or collecting and donating money. Thanks to you these kids are laughing again. Some people have asked if they can support the families in any way. If you want to support the new families, you are of course more than welcome. Or I can also recommend a wonderful project which my friend Jonny has started in one of the camps – It’s an art project that will be run every afternoon in the camp’s little school tent. The kids get a chance to create, paint, and be creative for a moment every afternoon. It’s gives them a highlight every day and it warms your heart to see how successful this art class is. Otherwise, there is a plethora fantastic greater voluntary organisations who are all doing a wonderful job. Lighthouse Relief is one of them and I very much recommend them.

To help Share the Magic in Sweden, send a donation via Swish: 0736800444